Time For Smokers To Air Their Feelings: Opinion Piece

To the editor:
It's time for smokers to speak up. We are not low-life scum who deserve to pay more taxes than any non-smokers because of our choice to smoke.
They say that it's because smokers are higher health risks. Then why don't they over-tax everyone with higher health risks? Why not add a dollar candy bar tax? Obesity is a high health risk. That candy bar could also hurt diabetics.
Add a dollar to every fast-food burger sold. Let's tax all health risks. Let's add a dollar tax to every sexual enhancement toy, pill or video because that could lead to unprotected sex and increase risks of sexually transmitted diseases.

Let's add a dollar a pill to the drug companies -every drug they advertise has possible side-effects that are health risks. While we are at it, let's tax the elderly; they are a high health risk. Let's kick up the taxes on skydiving, motorcycles, guns... the list goes on!
This should be obvious that targeting anyone to pay more is wrong.
I thought America was a free country. Smoking has been around far longer than the United States has been a country. Do you think the pilgrims smoked a peace pipe with an Indian thinking, aha, we can tax what they smoke?
If you remember your history, you will remember Prohibition. Alcohol never disappeared when it was banned; it just went underground to the bootleggers. I realize we are not banning tobacco, but if it's taxed beyond the average American's ability to buy it, it will go the same route. Where will that extra tax money go? It won't go to health care. That tax money will end up funding additional law enforcement. Stores that sell cigarettes will be robbed far more often.

Underground tobacco "bootleggers" will have to be found and stopped. It will get to the point that it's cheaper to go buy illegal drugs than legal tobacco because law enforcement is too busy to do much else.
I can understand protecting non-smokers, children, etc. You also have to let businesses make their own decision. Do they want to allow smoking? If they do, it's the non-smokers' choice whether or not to patronize that business.
America, the land of the free? Well, that is, unless our government decides they can hit you up for more taxes because they are bailing out millionaires on Wall Street. They can keep the measly $300 kickback if it means I don't pay five times that in excess taxes targeted only at smokers.
As I write, 21 percent of Americans smoke and 32 percent of Americans are obese. All of them are health risks, why should only some of them pay more taxes?
Tobacco should be taxed no differently than a bottle of wine; a bottle of aspirin; a candy bar; a super-sized, grease-dripping bacon cheeseburger; a video game; or even a drug that has any possible side-effects.
Targeting smokers is wrong and unconstitutional. Our country has worked so hard for so many years to make everyone equal, and now they pick on smokers. Where is it going to end? People need to write the governor and the president and let them know this is just not right.
Don Watts
Jacksonville, North Carolina